Thorney, Cambridgeshire
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Thorney is a village about 8 miles east of Peterborough in Cambridgeshire on the A47.
Its new bypass opened in Winter 2005.
Its primary school is the Duke of Bedford Primary School.
The village was built at the command of the Duke of Bedford, as he wished to have a healthy place in which his farm workers could live. This explains the uniformity of the housing in the original centre of Thorney. Tracing its roots back to around 500AD when it started out as a Saxon settlement, the existence of Thorney Abbey made the settlement an important ecclesiastical centre for a long period of time, and the village is still the most northerly point of the Anglican Diocese of Ely.
Nestled on the outskirts of Thorney is the windmill which dates from 1787 and contains 5 floors. During the war, 4 prisoners of war from Zelchren, Germany worked there. It once has six sails which sadly are no longer.
